Wednesday, March 14, 2018

The beta review period for Unicode 11.0 has started. The Unicode Standard is the foundation for all modern software and communications around the world, including all modern operating systems, browsers, laptops, and smart phones—plus the Internet and Web (URLs, HTML, XML, CSS, JSON, etc.). The Unicode Standard, its associated standards, and data form the foundation for CLDR and ICU releases. Thus it is important to ensure a smooth transition to each new version of the standard.

Unicode 11.0 includes a number of changes. Some of the Unicode Standard Annexes have modifications for Unicode 11.0, often in coordination with changes to character properties. In particular, there are major changes to UAX #29, Unicode Text Segmentation. Seven new scripts have been added in Unicode 11.0, including Hanifi Rohingya. A major adjustment has been made to the Georgian script, with the introduction of uppercase Georgian letters. There are also 66 additional emoji characters.

Please review the documentation, adjust your code, test the data files, and report errors and other issues to the Unicode Consortium by April 23, 2018. Feedback instructions are on the beta page.

About the Unicode Consortium

The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop, extend
and promote use of the Unicode Standard and related globalization standards.

The membership of the consortium represents a broad spectrum of corporations and organizations, many in the computer and information processing industry. Members include: Adobe, Apple,
Emojipedia, Facebook, Google, Government of Bangladesh, Government of India, Huawei, IBM, Microsoft, Monotype Imaging, Netflix,
Sultanate of Oman MARA, Oracle, SAP, Shopify,
Symantec, Tamil Virtual University, The University of California (Berkeley),
plus well over a hundred Associate, Liaison, and Individual members. For a complete member list go to
http://www.unicode.org/consortium/members.html.

Over 130,000 characters are available for adoption, to
help the Unicode Consortium’s work on digitally disadvantaged languages.

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

The Unicode Consortium is inviting artists and designers to submit cover design proposals for Versions 11.0 and 12.0 of The Unicode Standard. This call is being issued simultaneously for the next two versions of the standard, scheduled for publications in 2018 and 2019, respectively.

The two selected cover designs will appear on the Unicode Standard 11.0 and 12.0 web pages, in the print-on-demand publications, and in associated promotional literature on the Unicode website. The two artists whose designs are selected for the covers will receive full credit in the colophon of the publication for which the art is used, and wherever else the design appears, and will each receive $700. Two selected runner-up artists will receive $150 apiece.

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

The alpha version of Unicode CLDR 33 is available for testing. The alpha period lasts until the beta release on March 7, which will include updates to the LDML spec. The final release is expected on March 21.

CLDR 33 provides an update to the key building blocks for software supporting
the world's languages. This data is used by all
major
software systems for their software internationalization and localization,
adapting software to the conventions of different languages for such common
software tasks.

CLDR 33 included a limited Survey Tool data collection phase focusing on emoji names/annotations and certain specific locales (Odia, Assamese). Other enhancements include a new typographic Names element, four new transforms, changes to properties data files for emoji, and other specific fixes. The draft release page at http://cldr.unicode.org/index/downloads/cldr-33 lists the major features, and has pointers to the newest data and charts. It will be fleshed out over the coming weeks with more details, migration issues, known problems, and so on. Particularly useful for review are:

The 157 new Emoji are now available for adoption, to help the Unicode Consortium’s work on digitally disadvantaged languages.

The main goal of the Unicode Consortium is to enable modern software and computing systems to support the widest range of human languages, present and past. There are approximately 7,000 living human languages, but fewer than 100 of these languages are well-supported on computers, mobile phones, and other devices. Adopt-a-character donations are used to improve Unicode support for digitally disadvantaged languages, and to help preserve the world’s linguistic heritage.